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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Catholic Online reports that new priests will be expected to be familiar with and promote efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
New priests to learn about global warming as part of formation
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LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) — The Catholic Church is intimately concerned about climate change. The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences is the world’s oldest, longest running scientific mission. That body, which advises the pope on matters of science, has concluded that global climate change is real and is caused, at least in significant part, by human activity.
This is important to the Church because creation care is part of our mission. We are called to be stewards of creation. It’s also important because climate change can exacerbate the ills of poverty. Poor people in much of the world are the most vulnerable to changes.
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Unfortunately, the issue is politicized. In the late 1970s, when the issue threatened the financial interests of the fossil fuel industry, the political lobbies, chiefly in the United States, financed a massive political disinformation campaign to manufacture the illusion of dissent within the scientific community.
We know because this manipulation of public opinion has been caught and documented. The fossil fuel industry funds nearly all of the climate change skeptics, going so far as to commission questionable studies, to financing think tanks, and even paying individual bloggers. The deception continues today.
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But what does this have to do with the Church?
The Church has a responsibility to care for people, and the environment. And care for one is also care for the other.
Now updated guidelines for the formation of clergy says new priests should understand this as well:
“Protecting the environment and caring for our common home — the Earth, belong fully to the Christian outlook on man and reality. Priests should be “promoters of an appropriate care for everything connected to the protection of creation.”
The new guidelines suggest that in the future, priests will also have a good grasp of the global climate change problem and will share this with their congregation.
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Read more: http://www.catholic.org/news/green/story.php?id=72433
From the Vatican website;
The Gift of the Priestly Vocation
… For some time now, experts and researchers, active in different fields of study, have turned their attention to the emerging planetary crisis, which is reflected strongly in the current Magisterium regarding the ‘ecological question’. Protecting the environment and caring for our common home – the Earth – belong fully to the Christian outlook on man and reality. They constitute in some way the basis for a sound ecology of human relations. Hence they demand, today above all, a “profound interior conversion. It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus become inconsistent. So what they all need is an ‘ecological conversion’, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evidence in their relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience. Therefore it will be necessary for future priests to be highly sensitive to this theme and, through the requisite Magisterial and theological guidance, helped to “acknowledge the appeal, immensity and urgency of the challenge we face”. This must then be applied to their future priestly ministry, making them promoters of an appropriate care for everything connected to the protection of creation. …
Whats next? Excommunication of scientists whose theories aren’t approved by the Pope?
Update (EW) – Added a quote from “The Gift of the Priestly Vocation” from the Vatican website.
Shameful. Glad I removed myself from the Roman Catholic Church years ago.
More fake news.
There is a serious coolong trend under way & people should be warned! Scan the internet for the truth.
There’s only one thing you have to remember about “climate change.” No matter what the weather does — t’s YOUR fault!
Let’s see who Trump picks as ambassador to the Vatican. It could get interesting.
Too bad Rudi Giuliani has taken himself out of consideration for administration positions.
Hold your horses just a moment, everyone! Nothing in the referenced article shows anything official at all from Rome on global warming. I will prove it.
1) There are no quotations from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
2) The word “pope”, as used in the referenced fake news article, is not capitalized, and anything coming from the Catholic Church that mentions the Pope will always capitalize his title of “Pope”.
3) The actual quote from the Dec. 7 document entitled “The Gift of the Priestly Vocation” is as follows:
“Protecting the environment and caring for our common home — the Earth, belong fully to the Christian outlook on man and reality. Priests should be promoters of an appropriate care for everything connected to the protection of creation.” I don’t see anything in that utterly non-controversial quote which states what you are implying.
4) Check this quote from the referenced article: “And care for one is also care for the other.” Where did the author learn English grammar? Anything coming from the Church is read, re-read, proofread, re-proofread, sent to a canon lawyer for approval, sent to a censor librorum to check the writing for doctrinal continuity in order to get what is called a “nihil obstat”, or permission to print in the name of the Church, then sent to a bishop for his Imprimatur. The above grammatical gem wouldn’t have gotten past step 2!
Now, it took me about 5 minutes of basic, simple research to find out that “California Network” is a group of probably well-intentioned college aged Catholic writers who do opinion pieces from a conservative Catholic perspective disguised as real journalism. They write on controversial topics attempting to elicit the kind of “outraged” responses I have been reading above, but it turns out to be much ado about nothing. Save your strength, everyone!
The Chicago Manual of Style recommends this style (which is consistent with the general style of capitalizing titles only when the name of the office-holder follows):
This third world Leftnut Pope will be gone soon, so the Church can return to its basic roots and its message. “Man caused global warming” is fake news, a scam, the Liberal crooked lie. The Pope should be ashamed to attach our church to this lie. Christ doesn’t approve of these lies.
The catholic Church has always been full of money grubbing liars….not really news
Carbon is the chemical basis of all life.
The hockey stick graph is a lie; the father of all lies is anti-life.
Too good to be true. Weather report right after the opening prayer. Update after second hymn and will end the service with a priest on standing on an interstate overpass doing a remote back to the congregation. Then again, what did you expect from a South American Socialist?
This pope needs to stick to religion and leave politics to others. He is a socialist through and through. He grew up in a socialist society and that’s all he knows.
Prior to WWII, Argentina had the largest gold reserves in the world, then along came Peron, who studied the political movements in Germany and Italy. He was most impressed that they could make trains run on time, something never achieved in South America. He and his cronies looted the national treasury, with the complicity of the RC church, and today Argentine is on the path to becoming a Venezuelan-type utopia.
He’s just doing what socialists do……….
Fake News — No one “tells” a priest what to say in his homilies — Popes nor Bishops — Person that wrote this doesn’t have a clue/
I checked with Zenit and VIS and I could not find any Vatican authority who said this. I don’t think Eric Worrall checked his sources. Look what he has done… by repeating fake news…
This is what happens when lies are propagated.
Paul,
You obviously did a poor job of checking. It’s not a lie just because you couldn’t find the actual guidelines:
http://www.clerus.va/content/dam/clerus/Ratio%20Fundamentalis/The%20Gift%20of%20the%20Priestly%20Vocation.pdf
Relevant section is copied below, in my reply to Osvaldo, and one of the many sources with the link to the guidelines is farther down.
Please be more thorough before casting false aspersions against posters here.
No. The Pope is not quoted in the links you provided. CHUMP They are general guidelines.
Fake news…
Just like the fake news about Galileo saying “yet it moves” fake news to stir up the willfully ignorant and the lying detractors.
“We are called to be stewards of creation.”
Here is their greatest opportunity to be great stewards:
“Here is the shocking news. If humans had not begun to unlock some of the carbon stored as fossil fuels, all of which had been in the atmosphere as CO2 before sequestration by plants and animals, life on Earth would have soon been starved of this essential nutrient and would begin to die. Given the present trends of glaciations and interglacial periods this would likely have occurred less than 2 million years from today, a blink in nature’s eye, 0.05% of the 3.5 billion-year history of life.”
http://www.thegwpf.org/patrick-moore-should-we-celebrate-carbon-dioxide/
Their new papal edict ought to be, “Burn baby. Burn!”
Is this pure ignorance on the part of The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, or just more of their dogmatic hypocrisy?
This is a lie.
For those paying attention, in the 70’s, the talk among climatologists was global cooling – the coming ice age. In the mid-to-late 80’s the same group suddenly flipped to warming. Since then, there have been regular predictions of a flooded New York, or massive increase in tornadoes and hurricanes. Not one of these predictions has ever come true.
There are many scientists that do not agree with the idea that manmade global warming is happening. It has been warmer in the past with lower levels of CO2, and cooler with higher levels of CO2. This alone should give any rational person pause. This is science – dissent is part of the process.
Since the specter of sanctioning those who do not toe the line with government-funded dogma can be directly compared to burning disbelievers at the stake, one can see history repeating itself. This Spanish Inquisition we do see coming.
Climate Change, formerly discredited Global Cooling and Global Warming, is a theory at odds with fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church. Catholicism teaches God is all-knowing and all-powerful. Therefore, God can and does control the universe. An all-knowing God could not create a flawed Earth that could be thrown into climate chaos by cows farting or humans burning fossil fuels. The God of Pope Francis is a a victim of his own creation.@ur momisugly#
creation god that powerless to control his own creation.
That’s in violation of the Church and the State , religion vs. politics. Church is in violation by speaking out about political topics.
There is no such restrictions on Churches in the United States. Religious people are as free to speak on any topic as anyone else….so far. Lefties are working hard to change that. The problem with this tragic position the Church has taken is that it is not only wrong, it is going to damage the Church and the larger world.
This is extremely sad. We enter yet another sad period in the history of Christ church where the leadership has decided to drag the church down into man made politics. Yes the church is concerned with the welfare of mankind. No doubt. However so are the people who audit this so called science. Common sense is that people on both sides of the discussion do not want a global travesty.
The current Church is absolutely incorrect in their rhetorical statement regarding disinformation in the seventies. What has been discuss since the seventies and continues to be discussed is where is the proof of the science?
Science is very straight forward. In order for a theory to be considered a fact and scientific law it must satisfy a few basic tests. A theory must be based on sound theory that does not violate the natural laws. Second it must be verified by test and the test must be repeatable and independently verified, and there must be a consensus of the results. Global warning fails these basic criteria.
There does not exist a paper or test or set of repeatable test data that validate the specific correlation that the warming of the earth that started in the 1970 has been “significantly” impacted by human activity.
In fact in the last 10 years most of the papers and data sets have been shown to be inaccurate in predication, inconsistent, non-repeatable, nor independently verifiable. In fact many have been shown to have been fudged which resulted in the name change from global warming to climate change which can mean anything. This is not disinformation. Just read the papers and reviews of the papers.
The 99% consensus headline was generated by a ridiculous exercise of searching papers with search words that made any paper a consensus.
We simply do not understand the relationship of the weather to the oceans, clouds and sun activity. If we did you daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly weather forecasts would be accurate. Think about it.
This movement of politicizing science has done great harm to many of the less fortunate of Gods children around the world. Billions of dollars are being diverted from the worlds people via taxes each year and spent to support the “Global science complex” and policies of politicians which demands ever increasing control over societies to gain and maintain power. Politicians do not act in Gods interest but there own as the history of man has repeatedly demonstrated . The diverted funds, or at least a significant portion of them, could and should be used to support the poorest among us to secure the basics of food, shelter, education, and opportunities in the poorest areas of the world while the “science” matures. We do have limited resources and should use them widely. I am sure Mother Theresa would agree with me.
This notion Global warming as a tactic of global de-growth and global socialism is very dangerous due to the nature of man as imperfect and susceptible to the sins of greed of power and money (aka Politicians)
If the Church wanted to be consistent in a global message at the time of the celebration of chirst birth it could have significantly more impact by teaching all of us to conserve so we can share and serve others who have less then we do. Basically, you get no points in the eyes of Christ by paying taxes to a politicians (Caesar) in a uncompassionate effort to do your work in name of your faith (Temple). You must make it a personnel sacrifice and take action to help others in order to walk in the footpath of Christ.
Sola Scriptural.
Great way to get ppl to bring tomatoes into church on Sundays. Then when Fr. Dip$hit starts babbling on about global warming, he will get pelted with tomatoes. Just as he deserves.
It’s finally come full circle. Those of us who have equated the CAGW movement as a religion rather than a science (and been derided) have achieved a most perfect vindication.
The more the people pay in taxes and higher costs due to regulations, the less they will have to donate to the church. Worse yet, it teaches people to turn to the Government to solve problems, not the church. I’m beginning to think this new Pope is a Trojan Horse.
Hey Pope, as a catholic I would ask you get out of the global warming issue! It is false and you should not be advocating for a false theory. Stop being a lighting rod for theories that most of us Catholics do not believe are true.
This is very disheartening, as was Pope Francis’s shared belief that maybe half of all married couples are in nonfunctional or maybe even spurious nonvalid unions.
With regards to weather patterns, as I understand it, it is the global freezing, I mean warming, I mean climate change alarmist that have been caught more than once fraudulently “cooking the books” so as to make the data fit their narrative. The data does not fit their erroneous assumptions and so they refer to a consensus of scientific opinion. Since when does science need a vote. Likewise why be suprised that a scientist might affirm a climate change phenomena that he also claims needs investigation and funding when he by the way will be the tax payer funded paid investigator or director of the institution that will allegedly be looking into it and getting to the bottom of it. Naturally the bottom is never found but the need for another study will certainly be acertained. I believe this is just the latest guise to implement socialism. Just as the courts are used to obtain what the ballot box will not produce in a free exchange or dialogue of ideas, this so called dirty carbon footprint nonsense allows the government to regulate commerce as well as pick winners and losers and fashion we the people into any creative shape or form they desire. With this kind of established authority or power in the name of saving the planet, oppose them in anything they desire and they tax or steal from you everything and anything that you own.
The church should not be so gullible so as to be used so easily by the children of darkness. When there exists a universal and open declared war on the unborn and at the same time these alarmist claim Cabon dioxide is so damaging to our precious and so fragile outersphere, a bell should ring.
Man made climate change is the great sham of our age (also called the great money grab). The skeptical scientists, who have been so vilified, have common sense and truth on their side. What’s in it for Eric Worrall and this Pope? Or are they just that gullible?
The pope is a dope. Pope John Paul II must be turning over in his grave seeing the actions of the current communist pope. It should now be called the Roman Communist Church.
Foolish things shall confound the wise. It is easy to get angry and self righteous and make things worse. The Pope is only human (not an antichrist) and it is quite possible that he has the science or even the politics wrong, but the essence of the message totally right. Time for some humility and searching for common ground.
I am a proud Catholic (recently returned after years of searching), a failed scientist (could not play the game), a climate change sceptic and a long term follower of Anthony and his blog.
I beg to differ with you sir. The Pope needs to practice some humility. Do you not remember that he met in secret with President Obama to revise foreign policy on Cuba. Since when does a Pope insert himself into the revision or development of American foreign policy. And do it in secret behind the backs of the American people. He like Obama has nothing but contempt for the United States. He like Obama is a communist. He is also a globalist. These are idolatrous concepts and beliefs in direct opposition to the bible and Catholicism. Stop apologizing for this imposter. And I would advise you to read “The Alta Vendita: The Freemasonic Subversion and Destruction of the Catholic Church,” and the encyclicals on Freemasonry written by Pope Leo and Pope Gregory. The Pope has lost his popularity in the United States.
Trust in God Allmhuran, It is not up to you to run the Church, Jesus has it covered. Keep your eyes on God not the freemasons or communists. (This may be appropriate: Do not do what they do, but do what they say!).